These are real people struggling with real-life problems.I wish the powers that be would stop pandering to the already-rich, entitled people,and throw substantial support to those hanging on by a thread.

Unfortunately, it’s only going to get worse; the new meme is "we’ve all got to make sacrifices."Except the power structure will ensure the rich get richer while the disenfranchised poor pile up like so much forgotten trash.

I completely agree, Melodye. I feel unable to continue in the face of the anger and betrayal. We’ve discussed how we went into this whole “new era” with our eyes wide open, but I had no idea how much it would be same old, same old.

As for fighting the good fight, I’m clinging to my weekly stint because at least for those hours, I am making a real difference. Otherwise, it feels I’m tilting at windmills.

I couldn’t agree with you more, Tracy. I abhor all this talk of austerity which governments and the wealthy use as an excuse to punish people with the least power and least resources. It’s unconscionable.

It’s true and it’s a shame. Overhere a few weeks agoI saw a little girl ( about 3 years old) crying on the street , dirty, calling for her mother. The mother was no where around, they leave her there to pick money from the cars. How can the goverment let people do that with kids! Why there is people hungry and people so very rich!
And the only thing we can do is raise our voice, battle for a better world, fair and with opportunities for everyone. Where children are protected.
It takes time and people wanting to change it.

Oh, that’s so awful about the little girl. No one should start her life that way. It’s wrong, wrong, wrong, and I feel complicit in all this. I know I’m not but it seems as if we should all grab pitchforks and torches, and take to the streets.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t feel as if enough people want change right now.

Sadly I think several western countries (including the US, Canada and the UK) are now plutocracies rather than true democracies and that the majority of their citizens have little say in how their countries are governed. Sometimes I wonder if we’ll need a revolution (like in France in the late eighteenth century) to really change this.

Yes. Again. We are most definitely a plutocracy at this point. Which is why it’s so hard for me to summon energy to fight back in the usual “democratic” ways. They’ve done an excellent job of keeping us divided in the US on the bogus “cultural/social” issues; rather than a populist movement to even the economic field, we’ve got people shrieking about abortion and gay marriage.

I agree with you and with every comment made. “There but for the grace of God…”
And I fear the grace running low in my life in the future. Hopefully not. Hopefully not in the foreseeable future, at least. But that takes me back to the quote.

Thank you, Jon, for caring, for making a difference. “A single candle…” and all that.

I don’t get why more people don’t see that we’re all in this together. That probably sounds naive but it’s true. We’re sharing time and space on this big, blue spinning ball, and it makes sense we care for one another and our planet.

I know so many people who struggle because they don’t have identification or have lost their birth certificates. We’ve let this idiotic “war on terror” remove the humanity from our society. Pieces of paper matter more than people. There are SO many things you cannot do in the US if you don’t have identification.

Have you seen the movie, The Other Guys? It’s not a very good film, but at the end they roll one of those jaw-dropping lists of statistics, eg that a CEO’s salary back in something like 1945 used to be 15 times greater than that of a worker for the company and today the difference is more along the lines of 600 times greater.

I haven’t seen that film but I know about that HUGE disparity between CEO salaries and worker salaries. I know Ben & Jerry’s had an executive salary cap in place to avoid that. It boggles the mind that it’s not against the law to earn that much more than the people who do the hard work.

Tracy is . . .

a writer of contemporary middle-grade and young adult fiction who enjoys trail running, hoop dancing, and bird watching. Sometimes, all of the above happen before her first cup of coffee.
BLOG KEY: Zippy = spouse. Wildebeest and Zebu = sons. Love and laughter = essential.